Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There were no pairings, whatever is happening today.

I welcome the opportunity to update Members on the progress the Government has made on housing, particularly since the publication of Housing for All in September 2021. It has been 19 months since the plan was published. Although we are operating in an ever-changing landscape, which most people appreciate, real progress has been made. It is important to take time to reflect on this and today provides an opportunity to do so.

Housing for All represents the most ambitious housing plan in the history of the State. The Government is committed to building at least 300,000 homes by the end of 2030. To achieve this we will continue to require an enormous effort from all involved. As I said, however, the start we have made is encouraging. We have secured the funding required. The guaranteed State investment of over €4 billion per year to support the largest State-led building programme ever will provide the assurances and certainty the sector needs to deliver on the ambition of Housing for All. Budget 2023 will support the delivery of a record 11,830 social homes, of which 9,100 will be new-build homes and 5,500 affordable homes this year. Over €1 billion alone will be spent on affordable measures in 2023.

In 2022, the first year of Housing for All, almost 30,000 homes were completed. This was an increase of 45% compared with 2021 but, importantly, it was an increase of 41% on 2019 completions, which was prior to the pandemic. In 2022, almost 57,000 homes were either commenced or completed. Commencement notices for approximately 2,000 homes were received in February 2023 and a total of 4,105 new homes were commenced in the first two months of this year. January 2023 and December 2022 saw record numbers since the collection of the data series began in 2011. I am not being complacent about this at all. We are keeping the commencement notices under constant review and taking action where we can to ensure developments are activated and homes unlocked for delivery. Last year was the first year of affordable housing delivery in a generation and verified figures, which I will publish in the coming weeks, will show that more social housing new-builds were delivered in 2022 than in the almost half century since 1975.

Numerous schemes have been introduced, extended or expanded to help buyers realise their dream of owning their own home. A measure we debated in this House, the first home scheme, which I launched last July, has had nearly 3,500 registrations and, most important, over 1,200 approvals issued to date. These real households and families, many of whom were renting, are now able to buy their own home because of the first home scheme. We have extended and expanded the help-to-buy scheme to €30,000. That is tax back in people's pockets to help towards their deposit. Since its introduction in 2017, nearly 38,000 households have benefited from the help-to-buy scheme.

We made changes to the local authority home loan scheme launched in January 2022 when we expanded it in March. This year's budget guarantees approximately €250 million in lending under the scheme. More needs to be done to ensure people are aware of this very good lending product, which provides a long-term fixed-interest mortgage. This scheme has helped about 2,800 households achieve their dream of homeownership. In addition, there are now cost-rental homes, a tenure that did not exist in this country between 18 and 20 months ago. We have approved more than 1,000 cost-rental homes to date. Tenants in those homes are guaranteed security of tenure for a minimum of 40 years with State-backed affordable rents.

Challenges remain, as all Senators know. The past year has seen an ever-changing landscape arising from the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis and rising interest rates. The Government has to be both proactive and pragmatic when it comes to emerging issues. When drafting the plan, it was important to build in the right checks, balances and flexibilities to make sure Housing for All meets the core issues and challenges as well as its objectives. This is why we are committed to reviewing Housing for All annually. The first review of the plan was done in November last year. The review set out how the Government is responding to the emerging issues. Thirty-three priority actions were identified and they will support the supply of well-built and, importantly, sustainable homes for people across the country. We will activate and accelerate the delivery of housing supply, while continuing to deliver the fundamental reforms in the plan.

We are also overhauling planning laws to streamline approvals to help get Ireland building. This is crucially important and long overdue. The Planning and Development Bill 2022 is before the joint committee for pre-legislative scrutiny. It is the most extensive planning reform since at least 2000 and it needs to happen. Planning decisions should be made by local authorities or An Bord Pleanála, not in the courts. This, along with the updating of current planning density guidelines, will further support the viability of developments and ensure the right houses are built in the right places.

Challenges also exist in other parts of the housing sector. The tightening availability of rental accommodation, as well as the increase in homelessness, are serious concerns for me and the Government. I assure Senators that our decision to bring the winter eviction moratorium to an end, as planned, on a phased basis from 31 March, was not taken lightly but it is the right one. Much of the commentary over the past two weeks has centred on a heartless Government, one which puts the interest of landlords above tenants. That is just not true. We know that had we continued the moratorium, as Sinn Féin and others suggested, we would only continue to shrink the market further and reduce the number of homes available for people to rent. We also know that the divisive narrative of us versus them, when it comes to tenants and those who have properties to rent, only serves to make matters worse. Only through increasing supply will we resolve the challenges we face in the rental market. Extending the eviction ban would not do this.

We have used the period of the moratorium to increase supply. This does not suit the narrative of some but it is the truth. We have used the past several months to increase social housing supply and emergency accommodation. For the record of the Seanad, in the last quarter of 2022, we delivered 6,000 new social homes and more than 1,500 local authority homes were refurbished. Some 500 new homeless emergency accommodation beds and 170 cold-weather beds were delivered during the moratorium. In quarter 4 of 2022, during the moratorium, 734 adults and 346 families exited homelessness and went into permanent secure accommodation. In the same period, we created nearly 2,000 housing assistance payment, HAP, tenancies.

We plan to go further still. In March, the Government decided a set of actions as next steps, including ramping up the tenant in situscheme further. That scheme exists and we want to target the purchase of at least 1,500 social homes with tenants in situ.We are adding an additional 1,000 new social homes, on top of what we plan to build, through targeted leasing initiatives in 2023 and 2024. The majority of those homes, amounting to approximately 600, will be provided this year and will be specifically targeted at those who are homeless and the single cohort. We have amended the Croí Cónaithe vacant property grant, which has already had 1,300 applications, to bring vacant homes back to use and for sale in towns, villages and cities right across the country. We will extend that scheme to include one additional rented property.

Significantly, we are giving tenants a first right of refusal to buy their homes. I will expand the first home scheme to that end and to support tenants to purchase their homes. We will ensure there is a cost-rental backstop to assist those who cannot buy their own home and whose incomes are above the social housing limit. This scheme will be established from 1 April. For those whose incomes are over the limit and cannot afford to buy their home, that home will come into cost-rental provision. We have also commenced a comprehensive review of the private rental sector, which is long overdue. The review will be complete by the end of June 2023 and I look forward to the opportunity to come into the House to discuss it further and hear Senators' views. It will ensure that our housing system provides an efficient, affordable, safe and secure framework for both tenants and landlords. We are exploring every opportunity to add supply to the rental sector, as well as solving the root issue for good.

Fundamentally, right across the board, we must continue to ramp up supply of affordable, safe and secure homes. By any fair yardstick or estimation, the delivery of 30,000 new homes last year, up from 20,000 the year before, is a good achievement. I will publish the social housing figures within the next two weeks, once they are fully verified. We built more new social homes in 2022 than have been built since 1975. We have affordable purchase schemes through local authorities for the first time in a generation. We approved 42 such schemes across the country, with an allocation of more than €200 million to provide some 2,800 homes. We will do more. We were never going to fix this issue in the first 16 or 17 months of Housing for All. However, the first full year of the plan has given us a good foundation to move forward and to deliver more on behalf of our people.